


set paradise aflame

by thebeespatella



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Asian-American Character, Beverly Katz is the Best, Canon-Typical Violence, Detective Noir, Established Relationship, Everybody Swears A Lot, Everyone Is Gay, F/F, Graphic Description of Corpses, Hannibal is Hannibal, I Tried, M/M, Murder Husbands, Original Character(s), Post-Fall (Hannibal), Suck Marks as a Consistent Reference in this fandom, Team Free Will, Teeth, There's A Tag For That, Welcome to the Beltway
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-05-15
Updated: 2016-05-22
Packaged: 2018-06-08 12:18:11
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,929
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6854356
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thebeespatella/pseuds/thebeespatella
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>“See, Ms. Katz, that’s the second part.” Crawford pulls another manila folder out from the top drawer of his desk. Katz has learned to expect the worst from these bland little folders, the slimmer the better, and she takes this one no less warily than the first. It’s a fat one. “We’ve found Will Graham.”</i>
</p><div class="center">
  <p>--</p>
</div>Fifteen years after her sister's murder, Detective Beatrice Katz is pulled back into Hannibal Lecter's bloody sphere of influence, and—well. That's never ended happily.
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

With instinct giv'n, that bears it in its course;  
This to the lunar sphere directs the fire,  
This prompts the hearts of mortal animals,  
This the brute earth together knits, and binds.

\- Dante, "Paradise", Canto I 

"Cold night," the guard at the front says, handing her a visitor’s pass under the bulletproof partition. 

No shit. It's November, in Virginia. But Katz just sticks the lanyard over her coat, and reapplies her lipstick.

Not that she usually makes it out this far—she's busy enough in D.C., but Jack Crawford had left a message with her sergeant, and now she's standing on the granite floors of the F.B.I., fingers impatient on the elevator buttons to get to the eighth floor. 

She has to stand for a moment looking at the floor map before she finds the door, etched with Crawford’s name, and his title. It makes her momentarily want to bolt, but she tightens the belt on her trench coat and walks in. Her hand leaves a foggy print on the glass. Every time she comes up to this office, she can’t help but remember the first time.

He stands up when she closes the door, a worn smile on his face. "Ms. Katz," he says. "It’s been a while. Please, have a seat." She just nods at him. She wonders what he’s picking up from her, with all his _behavioral science_ qualifications. “Thank you for coming out to see me.”

“Sure.”

“As you know, I like to keep people who were…affected by the Ripper case informed about progress, if it’s relevant—”

“I should know, I asked you to,”

A brief flash of annoyance across his face makes her want to smile. “Well. I’ll cut to the chase. We have some new information. I checked out the sources, they’re solid,” he says.

“About Hannibal Lecter?” Crawford nods, and Katz leans forward in her chair. “Lord Voldemort himself.”

He looks down at his folded hands for a moment with a tight smile. His suit is sleek and somber, but he looks deeply tired. She knows the look. Everybody who gets out of the field to work a serious desk job has the same lines—age-old wrinkles tired of spewing bullshit but doing it anyway.

“So?” she prompts. “You found him?”

“Yes and no.”

 _Jesus Christ._ “Yes or no?”

“We’ve had a series of reports—a string of murders across South America that fit the Ripper’s signature.”

“Organ buffet?”

Crawford nods, and slides the inevitable file across the table to her. She flips it open.

A naked white woman, speared on the prow of a cruise ship, wreathed in lilies—the close-ups show that she has no eyes and no teeth. An old man suspended from the rafters of a humble building—a school, maybe—two knives stuck cleanly through his throat—maybe post-mortem. Eyes and teeth also missing. Another man, partially flayed, wearing his skin like an unzipped wet suit—eyes dark—mouth soft—

Katz blinks slowly but the image of bright red exposed flesh still burns underneath her eyelids. She leans back with a heavy sigh. “I thought he ate them.”

“What?”

She gestures at the grotesque spread in front of her. “Hannibal the _Cannibal_? Everything looks intact here—I’d have to read the autopsy reports, but…eyes? And teeth? What, he making martinis and retiling the bathroom floor?”

“We think he’s…grieving.”

Katz snorts. “What’s he got to grieve? Dormant for a decade, and he got tired of sunning himself on the Copacabana?”

Crawford indicates the dried-maroon hollowness of the eye sockets on the first vic. “He’s furious that he could have been blind to something he now thinks is obvious. Blindsided, so to speak.” Then he points at the mouth on vic number two, empty gums pink and shiny in the white cast of evidence photography. “Teeth. Obviously, there’s a connection with the whole...ritual—”

“People-eating.”

“Right. But there’s also—teeth can symbolize control. When a perp is a biter, it has to do with marking, or possession—well, you don’t need a lecture on suck-marks right now,” Crawford says, “Point is, the Ripper is feeling out of control and the teeth are not a good sign.”

“If he’s not taking the offal…that was his thing. How do you know it’s him?”

“It has the same—feeling. I know it’s him. The same sense of drama.”

“I hope you’ve got more going for this investigation than _a sense of drama_ , Agent Crawford.” Her mouth twists as she contemplates the images before her again. She could have lived without knowing what the inside of someone’s skin looked like turned inside-out. “So, what’s the deal? Who’s he grieving?”

“See, Ms. Katz, that’s the second part.” Crawford pulls another manila folder out from the top drawer of his desk. Katz has learned to expect the worst from these bland little folders, the slimmer the better, and she takes this one no less warily than the first. It’s a fat one. “We’ve found Will Graham.”

Her lungs are slowly being drained of air—a sudden needle deflating any hope Katz had left. If Will Graham was dead, there was no way they were going to find Lecter. Graham had been the one variable—the one fluctuating element in the Ripper’s scheme, and if Lecter had lost him—to an accident, to his own rage—then that was the end of it. Graham was Lecter’s last human wound, and his corpse meant that it was stitched closed.

“Will Graham.” The name tastes like bile. “Where’s the body? Can I see it?”

“That’s the thing.” Crawford pauses, and looks at her with careful regard. She’s been on the receiving end of that look—equal parts compassion, pity, and calculation, an anxious cocktail—many times over the past fifteen years. He nods at the folder in her hands. “He’s alive.”

Katz looks down at the first page in the file. It’s a picture—pixelated with someone’s generosity with the zoom button, but it’s Graham, all right: she’s seen enough grainy CCTV images of the man to know him immediately. He’s barefoot on a porch somewhere warm, t-shirt sweat-damp, scar on his cheek distinct—aging, hair silvering at the temples and the scruff of his beard.

He looks—normal. Like any other middle-aged guy she might’ve passed by on a routine beat, out in Shaw or Petworth, drinking a can of beer on his porch in the sticky sunset of summer. She’s imagined him, more often than not, substantially more pathetic-looking—sickly, maybe, paler—than he appears; full, solid, real, on another cop’s route somewhere else.

“Fucker.” She tosses the folder onto the table. “So when’s he getting collared?”

Crawford holds eye contact for a moment too long.

Katz jumps to her feet, knocking over her chair. “Are you shitting me? You’ve found him—you found Lecter’s fucking— _boytoy_ , and you’re going to let him just hang out, jacking off on his porch? Agent— _Jack._ ”

A pause. “We want to offer him—”

“ _Motherfucker_.” She has to turn away, hands curling into fists. “Fuck. Motherfucker.” Every place she’s ever felt pain feels reignited—the sheer inertia of it sparking at the base of her skull and tightening her jaw to an excruciating level.

After all this time—

After all she’d done—

After everything—

“Fuck!”

“ _Detective Katz.”_

She turns to look at Crawford, breathing hard. “Detective Katz, kindly retrieve your chair and sit the fuck down like a fucking adult.”

She bites the inside of her cheek, tries to push the rage away. Retrieving her chair and then slumping in it. The folder is still open to that first damn picture of Graham.

“Immunity, then?” she says flatly.

“I’ve talked to the Attorney General.”

“Of Virginia?”

“Of the United States.” His mouth is a grim line. “She says there’s no case.”

“Well, shit. How—”

“All the evidence is circumstantial. We have no way to prove that Hannibal wasn't threatening Will, or—whatever story he tells, there’s going to be reasonable doubt, and then a hung jury, or, worse, acquittal. Besides”—the frown only deepens—“he has _spousal privilege._ ”

Katz is aware her mouth is hanging open; she just can’t shut it right now. “He _what._ ”

Crawford sits back, looks at the space where his wedding ring used to sit. “They got married. Worse—and yes, there’s a worse,” he says, off her expression, “they did it in the United States.”

“Jesus Christ.”

“It was right after the incident on the bluff—with Dolarhyde—the Tooth Fairy? It’s registered under both their legal names, too. There's a county in upstate New York that still uses a fucking fax machine. There’s a copy in the file.” His left hand clenches. “But if we give him immunity, we might be able to trade it for a couple interviews; testimony. For when we catch Hannibal.”

“ _If_. And that’s an _if_ I wouldn’t bet jack shit on.” Katz bares her teeth in a crippled smile. “You’re not going to catch him without Graham’s full cooperation. He’s a better asset when he’s with Lecter than not. And—if they planned this, they know there’s no case.” She glances at Graham’s picture again. “Circumstantial evidence. Fuck.”

Crawford just nods, almost meditatively, and the room is quiet except for the soft _ping_ of the elevator a few corridors down. It’s unusually dark in the office, the overheads off, with only a lamp in the corner casting a weird warm glow.

“Well,” she says finally. “Thanks. For the news, I guess.”

“Didn’t want you to find out from—anyone else.” Crawford studies the ceiling, lacing his fingers together.

“You telling the others?”

“Who?”

“The other—the other families.”

He lets out a big breath. “No, just you.”

“You think I’m the only one that still has _Tattlecrime_ as their homepage? Shit, Jack. You have to tell everyone.”

A pause. He tinkers with a pen on his desk; she waits.

“How’re you liking homicide?”

“What?”

“Your promotion. Homicide in D.C.”

She blinks at him. “That was almost two years ago, Jack. If I recall, you sent me a very nice card.”

“How’re you liking it?”

“Fine, I guess.” She watches him. It’s like being pinned to a corkboard, evading these sideswipe questions—like seeing elderly relatives but ten times worse. “Tough hours.”

Crawford nods. “So I hear.”

“But—you know. Unit’s got an okay clearance rate. My partner just went on maternity leave, though.”

He just nods again. “That’s what they told me.”

“Who—?”

“Katz. Beatrice.” He leans forward, putting his elbows on the desk. “I talked to your bosses. They said you could take some time if you wanted.”

“Some time?” Katz frowns at him. “For what?”

“If you wanted to—contract with us, for a while.”

“Contract…like, with D.E.A.? I don’t do busts anymore, Jack.”

“With _this_ office. The B.A.U. You’d work as a special agent in the field.”

“ _Special agent_. Yeah, definitely,” she laughs. “Can’t do anything here I can’t do in D.C.”

“Actually, it _is_ something only you can do.” He opens the desk drawer again, and pulls out a white plastic ID card and a badge, pushing them toward her.

Katz doesn’t even look at them. “And what’s that, Jack?”

“We want you to go down, take a trip. To Florida.” He straightens the badge in front of her. “I— _we_ —want you to talk to Will Graham.”

She stares at him for a minute, then leans forward, pushing his idiotic nameplate out of the way and placing her hands on the table so it creaks. “Okay, that’s some fucking bullshit, Jack.”

He says nothing.

“You’re kidding, right? You’re fucking with me. Now you’re going to laugh at me, and then I’m going to flip you off, and then you’re going to let me watch the interrogations when they’re done, I don’t care if they’re on tape.”

“Bea. We need you to talk to Graham.”

That feeling of punctured lungs again, spine sagging under the sudden weight of exhaustion. “I can’t,” she says, making firm eye contact. “And fuck you for asking.”

“It’s at the director’s request.”

“Well, let the esteemed Mr. Comey know he can go fuck himself also.”

“I know it’s a big ask, Bea. But it has to—it _should_ be you. Beverly…Beverly’s death is the one that really got to him.”

“What, he needed to see her dissected—like a goddamn insect exhibit—to feel bad about his little cannibal habit?”

“He tried to kill Hannibal twice. The first time was almost immediately after Beverly was murdered.”

“And he failed,” Katz snaps. “He didn’t have the guts. And I can’t believe you do.”

“Look, it’s—”

“You want me to go down and hang out on the beach with Will Graham? Discuss the terms of his goddamn immunity over piña coladas?”

“It’s St. Petersburg. It’s hardly the beach.”

“Fuck you, and Florida too.” She huffs out a sigh. “Can’t do it, Jack. Find somebody else to woo that motherfucker’s murderous ass.”

“It has to be you,” he says, voice sharp like broken china. “You’re the only way we’re going to get testimony out of him. I’m—I’m not happy about this situation either. But Will— _Graham_ —would sooner shoot me in the face than hear what I’ve got to say. But he’ll listen to you. Nobody else is left.”

“Why don’t you get—whatshisface. Price. Or Zeller. Why can’t they do it?”

“Because they would sooner shoot themselves in the face than talk to Will.”

“And what’s to say I wouldn’t?”

“You haven’t yet.”

“I had to check in my weapon at the front.”

Crawford drags a hand over his eyes, and when he takes it away they look empty and rugged as stone. “It has to be you, Bea. Will didn’t kill your sister. The Ripper did. And if Will can help us catch him…”

Katz recoils at his blundering manipulation. “Will Graham asked _my sister_ to investigate.”

“And Will was right!” Crawford’s voice rises. “Nobody believed him except Beverly, and he was goddamn right.”

Katz can only stare him down coolly. “So is this about you, or me?”

He scowls in return. “I’m asking you to do this because you can. The agency recognizes that you have a unique set of skills and relationship to Graham. This might be our only chance. The chances he’ll stay put for long—” Another deep breath. “He’s good at disappearing, and the Ripper’s still killing. It’s you or bust, Katz.”

Fucking Crawford. Knowing exactly where the line is hooked, right under the diaphragm, where she feels the tug of guilt, obligation, oath. The part of her that keeps a bottle of Bev's perfume stuffed in the back of her closet, and makes her wonder how many other perfume bottles are left abandoned at Hannibal Lecter's hands. 

She toys with the edge of the ID card. The photo is from her early days at M.P.D. She looks serious, and young, and like she has a stick up her ass. How far the uptight have fallen.

“Take the credentials, and the file home. Pack a bag,” Crawford says. “Call me if you’re going. Bring those back if you won't.”

“And if I went—how long would it take?” Katz asks, begrudging concession. 

“A week, tops. It’ll be good, get out of town. Get some sun.”

“Everyone in the Beltway is so fucking obsessed with the weather.” She takes the card and the badge from the table and shoves them in her pocket, and grabs the file too. Crawford turns to look out the dark window, doing a poor job of suppressing a smile.

“Better hurry,” he says. “It’s going to rain.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> * **Teeth** : Fun fact - if you have a dream where all your teeth fall out, it is a) terrifying and b) an indicator that you feel like your life is out of control.  
> * **Shaw/Petworth** : Neighborhoods in DC.  
> * **Mr. James Comey** is the current director of the FBI. Yes, I read the news.  
>  * **MPD** : I don’t know why, but DC police go by “metropolitan” instead of DCPD.  
> * Everybody in the Beltway is obsessed with the fucking weather, though.  
> 


	2. Chapter 2

Sleep and Katz are estranged—and tonight it’s worse than usual: her customary beer and Xanax leave her disoriented, but still finding patterns in the shadows on her ceiling. The humidifier is puffing away in the corner of her room, Alex sleeping quietly beside her. Alex’s asthma used to be terrible in the colder months, but the humidifier helps: now she breathes even and soft, her short hair fluffy and tousled against the pillows. At this time of night, the glow of streetlights two stories down, it seems like nothing moves. Katz puts a drug-heavy hand on Alex’s cheek, landing more heavily than she meant to, and scoots closer to burrow into the generosity of Alex’s warmth, just to try feel closeness.

“Babe, ‘m sleeping,” she mumbles, and Katz nods, remembers Alex can’t see her through closed eyes, and tries to be still.

&

 She gets up far too early, limbs restless with tiredness, and the city is barely awake outside as she scribbles on their whiteboard on the fridge, marker cap tucked between her teeth: “Went in early! –B”, and leaves the apartment. Too much time in there and she’d get stupid ideas like making and eating a full breakfast, or trying to fold the pile of laundry sitting on the couch, or trying to coax Alex into fucking.

The drive is as mindless as ever. NPR plays yet another a story about Syrian refugees—this time, they’re skinny and twelve and confused. She swings into her spot, and has two cigarettes before she goes into the building, smoking inside the parking lot under ill advisement.

Jack had not only called her in, but had gone ahead and contacted her department to pull his weight or jerk them around or whatever he got off to these days. She didn’t want to imagine what kind of stakes he’d played to get them to give her time off. Shit, you barely could get a week if your mom died—and then it was right back to yellow tape and jealous boyfriends and fingerprint powder. Fuck. She kicks the cigarette butts under her car: they’re both bright white, stained with the orchid bloom of her lipstick against the tar.

“Motherfucker in yet?” she asks Johnston in passing as she walks toward the sergeant’s office, coat and bag still slung over her shoulder. He just shrugs. _Useless_. She knocks on the door anyway, three smart raps.

“Come in.” Billings is sitting at his desk, eyes glued to his computer. He’s wearing a watch that rattles against the desk as he types. “Just a second, Detective.”

Katz just purses her lips and glares out the dirty window. Not that it makes a difference—not a lot to see.

“All done. So. What can I do you for?”

“Sir. You talked to Jack Crawford at the F.B.I.”

Billings nods and smiles. “Yeah, surprised as all hell when I got the call but—you going?”

“Since when does M.P.D. liaise with the F.B.I.?”

“I owe Jack a favor.”

Katz takes in his patterned suspenders, the tie that comes up just short because of his poached-egg belly, and his constant sniffle. Combined with the fact that he has more mustache than hair, frankly the sum effect is off-putting and disappointing, like dingy laundry that’s been left in the washer too long. “I just want to know what happened.”

“I thought you’d be happy about this.” Billings frowns and crosses his arms. It only makes his stomach bulge more prominently. “It’s a big opportunity.”

“I’m a police, sir. Not some asshole _special agent.”_

“But a federal agency—”

“Did he tell you what it was about?”

“Well, no, I—”

“The Chesapeake Ripper, Ken. It’s about the fucking Ripper.”

It is silent for a moment. There are three wetly balled up tissues on his desk, and she wishes she hadn’t seen them. “The Ripper. Is he—back?”

Katz considers for a second. While Crawford hadn’t told her it was sensitive information, the fewer people knew about Will Graham the better. “No. But it has to do with my sister.”

“Ah, yes. Naturally.” The mustache droops in an approximation of sympathy for half a second. “So—you going?”

“Fuck, I don’t know.”

“Florida’s nice, even this time of year.”

“Christ. Fuck the weather, Billings.” Katz sighs. “I’ve got three red vics, and Therese is having her baby.”

“Did he say where in Florida?”

She wants to scream. “St. Petersburg. It’s not even by the beach.”

“Great opportunity.” He nods and reaches for another tissue. “You should go. He said you were the only one that could do it. Can’t see why, but—”

“Fucking _dick_ —”

Billings is dabbing at his nose, stopping only to examine the spoils.

It’s pointless. She lets out an explosive sigh and turns to leave, but just before she opens the door—“You said you owed Jack a favor?”

He smiles. “He bought M.P.D. two rounds at a conference a couple years back. Nice guy.”

&

 

The day grinds on. Johnston tries to get her to trade an incoming call, but backs off when she snarls at him. “And I’m not on my fucking period, jackass!” she yells after him as he and his partner hightail it out.

“Katz,” Barrison whispers from his corner of the pen. “Could you—I have the mother of all fucking hangovers.”

“Tough shit,” she snaps, turning to her desk.

“What crawled up your ass and died?”

“None of your fucking business.”

“Fine. But could you shut up about it?”

“Fuck off, I’m working.”

That seems to pacify Barrison, who pillows his head on his wrinkled suit jacket and doesn't say anything. There’s a crusty patch of something on the sleeve, probably his own vomit.

Barrison. What a shitshow. Well on his way to his second divorce, sharp-eyed and kind when he doesn’t smell of cheap whiskey, and missing all of his kids’ birthdays to hang out with some C.I. so that maybe, this one time, they can get it right. This is his third day in that suit, although he’s changed his shirt, at least—all in all, a pretty good specimen of the stereotype about homicide: unhappy, unfortunate, and unwashed. Katz wrinkles her nose.

Not like she isn’t out with Barrison when they get off their shift; like she doesn’t know what it’s like to come to work with a hangover splitting her brain apart, voice raspy from fatigue; like she doesn’t know the powdery bitterness of an aspirin swallowed dry. The difference is that Katz has her unhappiness under control right now.

The phone rings. Barrison doesn’t stir. Technically, she’s up, but she’s down a partner, so she waits for him to cover. He’s drooling.

“Is anyone going to answer the damn phone?” Billings yells from his office.

With a sigh— “Katz speaking.”

 

&

 

Katz gets into the car still shrugging her coat on, only to get held up by the motorcade of some government fuck or another. Thankfully the guy who’d discovered the body has stuck around; the first cop, who cuts a more sympathetic figure with his narrow smile and glasses, interviews the panicking kid while Katz lights a cigarette and frowns down at the body for a moment, taking in the spread of the limbs, the angles.

“You got a probable C.O.D.?”

A lab tech shakes his head.

She snaps on a pair of blue nitrile gloves and squats down for a closer look.

Female. Dark-skinned, black. Early to mid-twenties, although it’s hard to tell. The girl’s body is splayed out in a dirty alley, tucked in between stray garbage bags like they would keep her safe. Even though it’s late November, Jane Doe is wearing a ruched, skin-tight dress in a truly horrific pink leopard print that barely crests her thighs. Gold strappy heels. No coat. Long plastic press-on nails in a grimy beige color.

Gently, Katz turns over one dry lifeless hand, then the other. “Get under her nails,” she grunts at the lab tech, then moves onto the girl’s face. Her fake eyelashes are perfectly glued on—a strange contrast to the disarray; the asymmetrical arches of her over-plucked brows. Big gold hoops in her ears. Bruising around the left eye socket, mottled in a kaleidoscope of abuse—some yellow as she healed, some fresh and bright purple. There was some attempt at camouflage with heavy make-up, but it’s totally unsuccessful. And then—her throat, also a mess of bruising; only these are distinctly hand-shaped and fresh. Katz puts her hand over the marks to compare size: surprisingly, their strangler’s hands aren’t too much bigger than her own.

But it’s impossible to tell if they’re post- or ante-mortem, so she just motions for some close-up shots and continues. She feels around the trachea for irregularities. The hyoid bone is probably broken—the girl wheezing her last breaths in pain. She had been some corner boy’s girl at best, but probability has Miss Doe turning tricks up til the minute she died.

But then—where’s the money? Katz tugs down the top of the dress—but no bra, no place to tuck in the bills. Same for down below, only rather conservative panties in cotton, trimmed with itchy lace. She pokes around the gusset, but nothing. She frowns, forgetting the cigarette in her mouth. “Where’s the bag,” she mutters.

“What?”

She stands up, knees popping outrageously. Jesus. “Was there a bag? Did you move anything?”

The lab tech shakes his head. “We just took pictures. Didn’t touch anything.”

“No bag.”

“No bag.”

“Okay.” Katz throws her cigarette down to smolder, crushes it under her boot heel. “I’m taking a walk. I want the whole nine-yards—throat swab, under the nails, saliva, mucus, other fluids. Tox screen, rape kit. And—every bruise and scrape. I want a diagram, photos, a goddamn voodoo doll. Got that?”

The lab tech nods.

“Thanks.” She nods at him once, then begins to stalk down the alley like a fishing trawler. Back gates on rusty hinges creak in the breeze. A baby cries in the first house she passes, and she can hear it wail all the way down the street.

The question is: would the bag match the shoes or the dress? It helps to know what color you’re looking for. Katz stops for a moment, closes her eyes. In the dark, it’s easier to recall the image. Jane had unusually big feet—an eleven, eleven-and-a-half—probably bigger than all her friends. Pink leopard print dress. More than just tight—too small, Katz realizes. Borrowed. The earrings—bright gold, scraped plastic. It’ll be the shoes. So she walks on, looking for any sign of a gold bag, kicking over empties as she peers into ragged, bald backyards.

She finally spots it by another overfilled dumpster, sandwiched between two bags of very ripe trash. “Fuckin’—love my job,” she mumbles, plucking the purse out of hiding. The magnet snap-closure is already open, and there’s just a pack of gum and some loose tobacco at the bottom. Katz looks back at the trash, and sighs.

After a lot of squirming and squelching noises, she finally comes back to the scene with a wallet, a flip-phone, and a handful of paper and cards. She gives the first two to evidence, flipping through the stack in her hand. The first thing is a gift card to Barnes and Noble. The second is a scrap of paper with three out-of-state numbers handwritten on it—Katz tears off one glove so she can take a picture with her phone, run the numbers in the office later. Then there’s a Safeway card, a CVS card, a SNAP card, and then—

“Gotcha,” Katz says, cracking her first smile all day. It’s a driver’s license. They can run it later—always so much easier with an ID. No longer a member of the Doe family, at least. But the card underneath makes panic rise to strangle her with its icy stabbing fingers. She whips around—they’re just zipping the body bag up. “Stop—wait!”

She leans over the body. “Get a camera. Check her teeth—check her fucking teeth—“ She pushes open the lips one-handed with a rough shove.

They’re all there. Some capped, and some cavities, but they’re all there. “Uh—thanks. Sorry, I just…thanks.” Katz steps back. They zip Jane up, put her in the back of the bus, and go to the morgue.

Katz only realizes then that she’s still clutching a lot of evidence, and drops it all in a spare bag. She makes it to her car, and grits her teeth against the temptation to turn on her siren just to make it back faster.

Katz takes a minute before she steps into the office. Just outside the doors. She hates this moment, where she has to re-enter the world of rude ringing phones and coughing and squeaky chairs. Crime scenes are the perfect quiet—there’s a macabre order about the dead. The living are loud and unruly. She’s punched out, exhausted, and slumps in her chair.

“Bad one?”

“Not too bad. Got ID.”

“Hey, look at that! How nice of your perp.”

“Nice my ass,” Katz replies. “Had to take a swim in a dumpster to find it.”

Barrison shakes his head. He’s managed to regain some consciousness while she was gone. “I’m going to get food,” he says. “What do you want?”

Katz considers. “Fine. Johnny Rockets—burger, fries. Strawberry milkshake.”

“Katz, that’s, like, _fifteen_ minutes away—”

“And while you’re out, can you take this down to evidence?”

Barrison sighs and goes to snatch the bag from her.

“Wait.”

Before she hands it over, she takes a picture of the license, and then the business card, too:

 

_FREDDIE LOUNDS_

_Editor – Tattlecrime_

_Your premier source for breaking crime news in the DMV!_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> * **red vics** : I don’t know if they do this everywhere, but open cases are written on a whiteboard in red, solved cases are in black.  
> * **C.I.** : Confidential/criminal Informant. A civilian who can get the police information…at the right price, of course.  
> * **C.O.D.** : Cause of Death.  
> * **SNAP** : Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program; what used to be called food stamps.  
> *If you have other questions, leave them in the comments!

**Author's Note:**

> Did I write this entire fic because I'm still mad about Bev's murder? Maybe.


End file.
